


Parachronism

by malacophilous (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Clubbing, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashback, Language, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, We've met before, Younger versions, sex under the influence, unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:37:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/malacophilous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reckless young man and a medical student met at a club in the early nineties. Seventeen years later, in a lab at Barts, Mike Stamford made an unnecessary introduction.  Written pre-S2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parachronism

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic I go on the assumption that in 2010 the characters are the same age as their actors--Sherlock, 34, and John, 39.

**pa·rach·ro·nism**

 **  
_–noun_   
**

a chronological error in which a person, event, etc., is assigned a date later than the actual one.

 

 _‘We've only just met, and we're going to go look at a flat.’_

 _‘Problem?’_

 _‘We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name.’_

 

A needle-thin shoot of light slashed across his eye, then was gone.  The bass thrummed steadily as the erratic tempo oscillated over it like a hanging lamp struck with the flat of one’s hand.  Vision briefly flooded with bursting stars, John bumped into someone.

 

It was odd to think of it as bumping into someone, as everyone on the dance floor was allotted roughly four inches of space in which to move, and most didn’t make any observable effort to avoid jostling one another—if anything, the average dancer did their damnedest to touch as much of the surrounding crowd as possible.  But when John, terminally polite, felt that he had bumped into someone, he always apologised, even when the acrid revenant of poppers lingered in his throat, even with six drinks charging about inside him like liquid fists.

 

‘Oh, sorry!’ he shouted over the skittering cry of the music, through the dark and the searing beams of the coloured lights.  ‘The laser—didn’t see you!’

 

‘What?’ the boy shouted back—must have been about seventeen, with a face like that—and though he shouted his tone was lazy, relaxed and unconcerned.  His hair was dark, curly and full of green glitter, and a pink plastic barrette in the shape of a cupcake held one long ringlet out of his eyes.  ‘Oh—pleased to meet you, too.’

 

‘Sorry, _what_?’

 

John was standing still, a prime target for active elbows and arses and knees, but the boy hadn’t stopped dancing as they bellowed at each other over the noise.  John took a moment to observe him, thinking that any moment the handful of people between them would eclipse him from view.  White skin-tight babydoll tee with a scattering of black skulls, over bright purple fishnet sleeves; elephant-legged raver trousers draped with chains and bondage straps that glowed in the UV lights; one side of a pair of toy handcuffs cinched round his wrist, the other side dangling and unoccupied; a rainbow of plastic bracelets decorating his arms and about a dozen candy necklaces round his throat, creating a sort of collar.  Through the crush of bodies, John couldn’t see his shoes.

 

The boy’s hips moved obscenely slowly to the frenetic music, and his hands twirled and twisted into flower shapes like a belly-dancer’s on fast-forward.

 

It didn’t matter if John liked him.  John liked the _look_ of him.

 

‘Buy you a drink?’ John called over the din and the heads of the dancers who separated them.  In answer the boy darted across the divide and grabbed his hand.

 

‘Come on,’ he said, and he was beside John, taller than John, and his breath was hot against his neck, the sliver of tab on his tongue just visible as a revolving spotlight arced overhead.

 

Upstairs in the overlook lounge, the sound was dimmed by thick glass and wall panels, but the thump of the bass could still be felt through the floor.  In glossy sofas that hugged the walls, brightly-dressed, shimmering club-goers tipped back little plastic stockings-eggs full of mixed drugs, leaned over the spindly tables with silver tubes held to their delicate noses and inhaled.

 

‘I’m Lock,’ the boy said with a wink and a click of his tongue, as soon as the door had closed behind them and the worst of the noise had been sealed away, ‘like the devil kid from Nightmare Before Christmas.’

 

‘Can’t say I’ve seen it,’ said John, handing the boy his drink (which was heavy on grenadine, spiced rum and not much else).

 

‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ Lock said, lighting a clove cigarette and drawing deeply on it, ‘you really ought to—what was your name?’

 

‘Er, John.’

 

‘Well, that’s a bit _boring_ , isn’t it?’  Lock laughed, leaning against the observation window and looking down into the crowd, eyes flickering like after-images.

 

John didn’t know whether he was joking or not.  He rubbed his wrist with his opposite thumb: a nervous gesture.  ‘If I’m so boring, why’d you let me buy you a drink?’

 

‘I let everyone buy me drinks,’ Lock admitted, not looking at him, smoke curling from the kretek cupped in his hand.  ‘To be perfectly honest, John, I’m a bit of a tart.’

 

John didn’t know what to say to this, but his mind flooded with vivid pictures of just what sort of tart he potentially was.

 

‘I mean, I don’t mean to be rude but it’s a bit pedestrian of you, to have a name like John,’ Lock drawled, ‘with an arse like _that_.’

 

John laughed.  ‘I hardly see what my arse has to do with it.’

 

‘It has everything to do with it.  My name, for instance—at least the one I give out freely—has been slightly altered from its original state, and it suits me perfectly, and yet you’re still going about being a plain old John.  Why not invent something more adventurous?  It’ll get you attention.’

 

‘I’m not adventurous,’ John confessed.  ‘Coming here is about as daring as I get.’

 

‘Danger grows on you, though,’ Lock murmured into his drink.  ‘Soon you won’t be able to get away from it—you’ll eat danger, breathe danger, you’ll sleep with it.  Got any pills?’

 

John took a sip of his Martini and shrugged.  ‘Sorry, no.’  He paused, backpedalling.  ‘Er, if—’

 

Lock sighed explosively, like a petulant child, fogging the glass.  He dragged his finger through the vapour, shaping a heart in his breath.  ‘I know you haven’t got any, John, I just wondered if you would say you had.’

 

‘Why would—?’ John started.

 

‘To please me,’ said Lock.  ‘So many people say things just to please me, but I know they’re lying.’

 

This was either egotism or genuine perceptiveness.  John was curious.  ‘What sort of things?’

 

‘Oh, compliments,’ Lock said with a dismissive wave of his arm.  The dangling handcuff smacked into the soundproof glass with a clang, and a cluster of goths in the corner glared indignantly at John through their eyeliner, as if to say, _Muzzle him, would you?_   ‘Stupid compliments, boasts that are meant to be impressive but come off only as utter stupidity.’  Lock said this last with such contempt that John almost recoiled, as if anticipating a blow.

 

It was delicious, how so much malice could hide in such a narrow, lanky person, behind such a smooth and untroubled face.  Under the glitter, there simmered something like depth.  It was magnetic, _dangerous_.

 

‘I won’t pay you any compliments,’ John assured him, ‘unless you ask for them.’

 

‘When I ask for them is when I need them least.’

 

‘Fine, none at all.  At least not out loud.’

 

Lock’s expression faltered; John could see it reflected in the glass.  ‘A fabulous suggestion.’

 

John felt suddenly awkward.  Lock still hadn’t turned to face him.  John occupied himself by staring at the way Lock’s hair curled and fell across the back of his neck, how the candy necklaces were slightly too small for him, for there were gaps in the candy pieces where the elastic was stretched taut.

 

‘You didn’t mean to get my attention,’ Lock said, finally turning from the observation window to look at him.  ‘You bumped into me by accident.’

 

John was taken aback.  ‘How—how did you know that?’

 

‘You seemed utterly surprised when I touched your hand,’ Lock said quietly; John almost had to strain to hear him over the conversations of the other people in the lounge, and the churning bass from downstairs.  ‘You seemed similarly surprised when I didn’t wander away after you gave me my drink.  You’re used to blokes simply taking what you have to offer, and finding something better.’

 

John frowned, but knew he was right.  Damn him.

 

‘Plain old John,’ Lock said with a quiet laugh, ‘do you like being surprised?’

 

 John admitted that he did.

 

‘If I were to tell you to follow me, would you?’

 

‘I—I don’t know, actually.’  This was a lie.

 

Lock clearly spotted it.  ‘Could be dangerous.’

 

John felt something lurch in the pit of his stomach, something like desperation.

 

Lock smiled like a knife, a flash in the dim and then it was gone, but his eyes still brimmed with energy in its wake.  ‘I’m going to wander away now.  You’re going to follow me.’

 

He was right.

 

 

Seventeen years later, in a lab at Barts, Mike Stamford made an unnecessary introduction.

 

John recognised Lock, even without the glitter and the candy necklaces and the cupcake barrette; Lock, however, did not seem to recognise John.  Of course, John realised, why would Lock remember _him_?  Plain old John, the medical student with the bad haircut and uninteresting, generic club-wear; plain old John with his plain old Martini, who didn’t have any pills, who bought him drinks and promised never to compliment him out loud, plain old John, a flash in the pan, a plaything of an idle evening, full of gasps and clove smoke and semi-anonymous sex.

 

‘We don't know a thing about each other.’

 

This was mostly true.  John knew very little about Sherlock Holmes aside from his taste in weekend clothes almost two decades ago, his taste in cigarettes and cocktails, the way he spoke of stupidity as if it were a fatal disease, the way he arched his back and clawed at John’s and whimpered in a small voice too small for his body, the way his cock curved up slightly at the end, the way his hands trembled so that he fumbled and eventually dropped the only condom they had between them and said on the wake of a shaking breath, ‘Sod this, I don’t give a damn, do you?’  John knew the way his pupils shot wide and black too quickly when John kissed him when both their eyes open, the way his voice broke into a keening cry when John nipped at his ear, the way he took John’s hand and placed it round his throat and begged obscenely and desperately for pressure until John complied, the candy necklaces crumbling into sharp little pieces and digging into their skin as John squeezed.

 

 ‘I don't know where we're meeting.’

 

This was true.  John remembered only where they had met, and if the club in question hadn’t closed five years afterward and been converted into an art gallery, John would have been able to find the exact spot on the dance floor where their eyes had met, their hands had touched; he would have been able to trace the heart on the glass of the overlook lounge.  Similarly John remembered, in the sharp clarity that endures over years of replaying scenes in one’s mind, the wall outside the club against which Lock had pressed him, kissed him with a fury that defied logic, pawed at John’s jacket helplessly, as if the way zippers worked was too much for his speed-wracked mind to process.  John remembered how it had started to rain, how they ran for six consecutive cabs and were passed by each time, how they couldn’t keep their hands off each other long enough to check which street they were on, how they ended up outside Harrods and briefly discussed what would happen if they broke in and had sex on one of the beds in the linens section.  John remembered how Lock had taken him on a breakneck shortcut through narrow, pitted alleys and behind gaps in brick walls hidden by skips, finally ending up at Lock’s flat, or at least the place he was living, which was decorated with bird bones hung as mobile sculptures and about twenty David Bowie posters on the walls.  John remembered not knowing in what part of London they had ended up, his mind blurred with alcohol and biting kisses and rain.  He remembered not caring.

 

‘I don't even know your name.’

 

This was true.  A few moments later, it was false, and there was that wink again, that click of his tongue, and John knew that surely he recognised him now—how could he have missed it, he was _brilliant_ —and once again John was thoroughly lost.


End file.
